Sunny Singh

Sunny Singh is a globally acclaimed, critically renowned novelist and internationally reputed academic of the arts and social sciences. Locating her research interests and pedagogy in a unique, multidisciplinary approach that draws on multiple theoretical frameworks and diverse academic traditions, her professional output transcends academia and extends into public discourse and advocacy. Singh is recognised as a pre-eminent decolonising public intellectual. By embracing a pathbreaking, compassionate and transgressive academic practice, she is today one of the UK’s leading champions for inclusion across all aspects of society.

Photograph of female lecturer Sunny Singh

Sunny Singh

Sunny Singh is a globally acclaimed, critically renowned novelist and internationally reputed academic of the arts and social sciences. Locating her research interests and pedagogy in a unique, multidisciplinary approach that draws on multiple theoretical frameworks and diverse academic traditions, her professional output transcends academia and extends into public discourse and advocacy.

Singh is recognised as a pre-eminent decolonising public intellectual. By embracing a pathbreaking, compassionate and transgressive academic practice, she is today one of the UK’s leading champions for inclusion across all aspects of society.

 
Singh currently teaches on the BA: Creative Writing and English Literature and MA: Creative, Digital and Professional Writing. She's the lead tutor on the BA for Creative Writing, focussing on fiction and as well as ethics of creative practice.
 
Her contributions to the teaching of English Literature focuses on contemporary literature, feminist theory, post-coloniality and geopolitics of culture. She contributes to the MA with specialist knowledge on fiction and research methods for creative practice.

Sunny currently teaches on the Creative Writing and English Literature BA and Creative, Digital and Professional Writing MA. Singh is the lead tutor on the Creative Writing course, focusing on fiction and as well as ethics of creative practice. She has also taught modules in film studies, theatre, scriptwriting, journalism and cultural studies. Her particular interest is in ethics of creative practice.

Sunny has nearly 20 years of experience of teaching in higher education in transcultural, global environments. Her contributions to the teaching of English Literature focus on contemporary literature, feminist theory, post-coloniality and geopolitics of culture. She contributes to the MA with specialist knowledge on fiction and research methods for creative practice.

Sunny teaches on the following modules:

  • Writer's World
  • Writing and Editing Fiction and Nonfiction
  • Publishing and the Book: then and now
  • Project (Creative Writing and English Literature)
  • Researching Media, Communication and the Creative Industries
  • Creative, Digital and Professional Writing Project / Dissertation

Single authored books

  • A Tango Bar and Other War Stories (forthcoming)
  • Re-visioning Bollywood: Towards Culturally Relevant Theoretical Frameworks (forthcoming)
  • Amitabh Bachchan. (London: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan Film Stars series, 2017)
  • Hotel Arcadia (London: Quartet Books, 2015); Translated into Dutch, 2015; French 2016; Turkish 2017; other languages forthcoming.
  • With Krishna’s Eyes (New Delhi: Rupa Publishers Ltd, 2006); Translated into Spanish, 2005; French, 2007; Italian, 2008, and; Serbian, 2009
  • Single in the City: The Independent Woman’s Handbook, (New Delhi: Penguin, 2001)
  • Nani’s Book of Suicides (New Delhi: Harper Collins India, 2000). Translated into Spanish, 2003. Winner of the Mar de Letras Novela de la Diversidad prize, Spain, 2003

Short stories:

  • ‘Tulips’ (forthcoming)
  • ‘The Refuge’ (forthcoming)
  • ‘A Tango Bar in Buenos Aires’ in The Good Journal, July 2018
  • ‘In the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens’ in An Unreliable Guide to London (London: Influx Press, July 2016)
  • ‘The Wait’ in The Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, May 2011 (Japanese translation in the Hawakaya’s Mystery Magazine, March 2012)
  • ‘Faded Serge and Yellowed Lace’ in World Literature Today: A Bimonthly Magazine of International Literature and Culture, November 2010
  • ‘A Cup Full of Jasmine Oil’ in The Drawbridge, Issue 13, Summer 2009; Reprinted in the Orientalia Suecana, Vol 60 (Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala Universitet, 2012); in Minal Hajratwala (ed.), Out! Stories from the New Queer India, (Mumbai: Queer Ink, 2012); Aesthetica Creative Writing Annual (New York, USA: Aesthetica, 2018)
  • ‘Diplomatic Immunity Fatigue’ in The Drawbridge, Issue 10, Autumn 2008
  • ‘Tomorrow the Tigress Will Hunt’ in The Drawbridge, Issue 8, Spring 2008
  • ‘Bungalow Number Nine’ in Namita Gokhale (ed.), Days of Innocence: Stories for Ruskin Bond (New Delhi: Roli Books, 2002)

Essays:

  • ‘Loverboys, Superheroes, and the Global War on Terror: A Comparison of Extra-Filmic Imagery from Hollywood and Indian Action Films’ (in final stages of editing)
  • ‘The Gait of the Elephant’ in Pree Lit (Issue 2, December 2018)
  • ‘A Very British Blindness’ in Goodbye, Europe (Orion, 2017); Postcards to Europe (Orion, 2019)
  • ‘Why the lack of Indian and African Faces in Dunkirk Matters’ in The Guardian, 1 August 2017
  • ‘Crunching the number on the Jhalak Prize’ in The Bookseller, Issue 5759, 2 June, 2017, pp 18-19
  • ‘The end of necro-capitalism (but not necessarily capitalism),’ in Media Diversified Academic Space, 7 November, 2017
  • ‘To Die and go we know not where: Katie Roiphe’s The Violet Hour’ in Times Higher Education, Issue 2260, 23 June 2016, pp 54
  • ‘My Body is Not Your Images: Diversity, Aesthetics and Popular Culture’ in Yasmin Gunaratnam (ed.), Complicit No More (London: Media Diversified, 2014)
  • ‘Towards an Inclusive, Fluid Construction of Gender and Sexual in Commercial Indian Cinema(s)’, in Diana Dimitrova (ed.), The Other in South Asian Religion, Literature and Film: Perspectives on Otherism and Otherness (Routledge, 2013)
  • ‘Evolving Modernities: Formation of the Urban Imagination in Hindi Cinema’, in Karen McNally (ed.), Billy Wilder, Movie Maker: Critical Essays on the Films (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2011)
  • ‘From Kurukshetra to Ramarajya: A comparative analysis of the star personas of Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan’ in Diana Dimitrova (ed.), Religion in Literature and Film in South Asia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)
  • ‘In Praise of the Delinquent Hero or How Hollywood Creates Terrorists’ in James Atlas (ed.), How They See Us: Meditations on America (New York: Atlas, 2009)
  • ‘Sobre Santas y Guerreras’ (in Spanish; About Saints and Warriors) in Context: Asia Pacific edition, the PEN International Magazine, Vol. 59, No. 2, Autumn/Winter 2009
  • ‘The Road to Rāmarājya: Analysing Shah Rukh Khan’s Parallel Text in Commercial Cinema’ in BELLS: Barcelona English Language and Literature Studies, Vol. 17 (2008)
  • ‘Writing Against History: Seizing Subjecthood for the Aborigine Narrative’ in Sue Ryan-Fazilleau (ed.), New Zealand & Australia: Narrative, History, Representation (London: Kakapo Books, Centre for New Zealand Studies and Birkbeck, University of London, 2008)
  • ‘Defining the Self, Not the Other: Development of a Non-Pakistan-centric Post-Globalization National Identity in Hindi Cinema 1996-2006’ in Meenakshi Bharat and Nirmal Kumar (eds), Filming the Line of Control: The India-Pakistan Connection in Hindi Films, (New Delhi & London: Routledge, 2008)
  • Review of “Gender and Caste in the Anglophone-Indian Novels of Arundhati Roy and Githa Hariharan: Feminist Issues in Cross-Cultural Perspectives by Antonia Navarro-Tejero” in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 32, No. 3, Spring (2007)
  • ‘Writing in My Own Foreign Language: Dilemmas of an Indian Writer in English’ in Madelena Gonzalez and Francine Tolron (eds), Translating Identity and the Identity of Translation (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006)
  • ‘Fear of Meeting Mr. Right’ in Jane Ganahl (ed.), Single Woman of a Certain Age: Romantic Escapades, Shifting Shapes, and Serene Independence (Maui and San Francisco: Inner Ocean Publishing, 2006)
  • ‘Mi Cine – El Bollywood: Rasas y Maya, conceptos milenarios en la actualidad’ in Papeles de la India (in Spanish; My Cinema, Bollywood: Classical Concepts of Rasas and Maya in Contemporary Culture), Vol. 32, No. 2, (New Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Relations, 2005)
  • ‘La Industria Cultural en la India Actual’ in D-CIDOB (in Spanish; The Cultural Industry in Contemporary India), Vol. 94 (2005)
  • ‘False Truth’ (a translation of an extract from Jhootha Sach: Desh ka Bhavishya, Vol. II by Yashpal), in Khushwant Singh (ed.), City Improbable: An Anthology of Writings on Delhi (New Delhi: Penguin 2001)

Theatre script 

  • Birthing Athena. First performance at the Sri Ram Centre for Performing Arts, New Delhi, January, 1999

Sunny is the founder and director of the Jhalak Prize and its new sister award Jhalak Children’s & YA Prize which seek to celebrate books by British/British resident BAME writers. She is also the founder and director of the Jhalak Art Residency that selects two annual artists-in-residence to create unique works of art that serve as trophies for the Jhalak Prize winners and showcase artists of colour in the UK. She is th former chairperson of the historic Authors’ Club. She continues to on board of trustees and advisory boards of charities focussed on inclusion and equity.

In addition to conference and seminar presentations, Sunny appears regularly at literary festivals and events not only to discuss her own writing but also issues of wider public interest. She is also a regular contributor to British and international television, radio, podcasts and print media. Prof. Singh is also engaged in an advisory role with a range of stakeholders in creative and cultural industries on matters of diversity, equity and ethics.
 
Prof. Singh was recognised as one of 150 Most Influential People in UK publishing by The Bookseller's annual list in 2021.
Dr. Sunny Singh
Professor of Creative Writing and Inclusion in the Arts
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